Jacques Cousteau Almost Wasn't a Famous Oceanographer—Here's Why

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Philippe Cousteau, Jr. shares a story about his grandfather, legendary explorer Jacques Cousteau, “that few people know.”

Courtesy Philippe Cousteau, Jr.

Grandpa Jacques with Philippe Jr.

Jacques Cousteau's grandson, Philippe Cousteau, Jr., is a diver in his own right, and works to continue his family's legacy of conservation. Here, he shares a story of how his grandfather very nearly didn't become one of the world's most famous oceanographers.

“If anything, my grandfather was an innovator. I’ll tell you something about him few people know. He actually wanted to be a pilot in the French Naval Aviation program. When he was a young man, he’d always had a passion for filmmaking; he’d get little home video cameras and make home movies back in in the 1930s, the 1920s. (He was born in 1910.) But he didn’t know anything about the ocean—he had no concern for the ocean, didn’t really know anything back then. He wanted to fly, and actually there was only a Naval Aviation program back then. There was no separate Air Force at the time; it was pre-World War II. He traveled on a naval ship around the world but after he applied—after he submitted his application—he was in a car accident and broke his back. He was washed out of the program, and denied entry. He was told to swim in the Mediterranean to rebuild his strength. A friend and captain of his, a man named Philippe Tailliez—that’s who my father and I were named after—gave him a pair of homemade goggles. (Because you couldn’t really buy goggles at the time to look underwater.) My grandfather became fascinated by what he saw. And he became frustrated about not being able to spend more time underwater, and that there were no underwater cameras. So he started to invent underwater cameras, and he co-invented the underwater scuba tank, or the aqua lung. He invented scuba diving. So I like to think of my grandfather as more of an innovator, as someone who solved problems—more of an innovator than anything else. What we do is looking at where we can innovate—that’s why I’m on Wall Street. We need to thinking about financial markets. We need to be expanding the conversation about conservation and sustainability into Wall Street. It’s a growing movement and we wanted to be a part of that in the early days.”—As told to Lindsay Talbot